Project Mayhem
by Chesra Talasei
Summary: No one did crazy like Mello. mattxmello


Mello had an inferiority complex the size of the Pacific Ocean, and the only good thing that came out of it was his friendship with Matt. 

Matt supposed Mello liked him because of his obscurity, his complacency, his devil-may-care attitude. Matt wasn't out to compete with Mello, and that made him harmless. The last thing Mello needed was double-edged sword in his hands—he had bigger fish to fry. Near, L, Kira. He had enemies, he had rivals, he had crime lords out there who had bounty hunters on his head; he had Trouble all over him and he had Death on his tail, but the one he needed (even if he never would admit it) was a friend, and it was Matt he chose (ever since that day when Mello threw a punch at him and Matt punched him back, because he wasn't going to take shit from some kid who looked a lot like a girl. Little did he know that it would change his life forever).

Matt was the nobody; he was good with being part of the background. People didn't remember him—just another redhead who liked to smoke one too many cigarettes, easy to file away as unimportant. Mello, on the other hand, was always determined to be the star of the show, the lead player, the one who bowed and took all the roses. Too bad he always got the role of the understudy; he just wasn't good enough, just wasn't good enough.

Mello was good at getting attention (all those tantrums and dramatic fits), but he wasn't good at keeping it. He was the crazy blonde at the start of the show, but he always got killed off right before the end. Too volatile, people said. No one wanted a ticking bomb if it wasn't going to be defused at the last minute. Who wants an explosion, anyway?

That was exactly what Matt had in his hands - an upcoming explosion, and he couldn't even throw away the bomb in his hands. It was strapped onto him, on his brain, and he couldn't disarm it, even if he tried. He didn't want it (nobody did), but somehow it was on him and he just couldn't be bothered to throw it off. He got used to it, even, and sometimes he wondered if he liked having the bomb (at least it'll be a nice way to go out, it whispered in his mind).

Everything Mello was narrowed down to one thing, and that was L. Oh, how he wanted L to notice him. He spent days trying to walk like L, hunching himself over and eating chocolates, reading all night long until the dark circles became permanent. Matt had laughed then; shouldn't Mello just be his usual self if he wanted someone to notice him?

Mello had snarled and thrown a book at him; the next day, they both had broken noses and they didn't talk to each other for three hours (until Matt swallowed his pride and bought Mello a bag of Hershey's kisses, which Mello accepted without complaint, and the fight was over).

The blonde always had a problem with getting noticed - first with L, now with Near. L had gone away, off to Japan for some case that the police were too inept to solve. The Wammy children had bets on how long it would take L to finish it - one month, two weeks, three days, one hour. All their guesses had been wrong, oh so wrong, but they hadn't known it then, because L had been (still is) everyone's hero, and no one could defeat him. No one.

But with L gone, Mello needed to focus his unbridled energy somewhere, and when everyone began talking about L's successor, Mello found it. They had ranking tests every day, and it didn't take a genius to notice who was ahead of the pack - Near and Mello, constantly battling for first. Matt stayed a polite third (liked it that way, actually, because he didn't very much like being questioned in a rapid-fire pace by dodgy old gentlemen in a stifling room, even if there were cookies and tea. He remembered he learned to smoke from one of these men; his first time involved rich, fat cigars from some other country, but nowadays he'd gotten used to Marlboros), because it was just too much of a hassle to excel; Roger always said he needed _motivation_, like it was some sort of drug he could find in Africa and if he took it enough times, maybe he'd become another L, but Matt knew better.

They could pretend being the first was being the best, but being the first never meant becoming L. Of course, neither Mello nor Near understood that, because they were too far into beating the other that sometimes they lost sight of the whole point of it.

Mello spent most of his evenings reading books, determined to leave Near in his dust. Matt began sleeping with his face buried in his pillow, because Mello never turned off the light anymore, and he didn't want another bitch fit in the middle of the night.

Their first real fight (the one that had lasted more than a day, because Matt would always find a way to slip chocolate into Mello's bag before lunch and Mello would grudgingly offer to follow the curfew of lights out by two a.m., even if Matt never took it up because he knew it was just an offer) happened about two months after L left, when Mello began to get increasingly agitated over the man's absence. It didn't help that Near continued to place first in most of the ranking tests, while Mello had to settle for close second. Matt had made a comment about it; he always did, and Mello would twitch and yell and throw things, but this time it was different, because this time Mello yelled about Near and threw Matt's Game Boy Advance out of the window, and then it was war.

Matt hated getting angry; he hated wasting energy on useless things. The most exhausting thing in his life was Mello, and he was fine with that. Near, on the other hand, had never bothered him; he had never even exchanged more than ten words with the white-haired boy, and Matt had never even thought of Near as anything other than some other Wammy kid. He didn't understand Mello's need to involve Near in all of his problems, and it annoyed Matt because somehow it always ended up with him doing the damage control.

But what had hurt the most, though, was not the fact that his Game Boy Advance got broken and he needed to buy a new one, but because Mello had accused him of wanting to be Near's friend instead of his. Oh, he hadn't used those exact words, but that was it, basically; Mello wanted Near to focus on Mello like he had wanted L to focus on him, and he was irrational because Matt didn't give a damn. Matt didn't care the least bit about Near now that he had Mello (God, what was wrong with that crazy fucker? Wasn't it obvious enough that he would be willing to die for Mello if he asked for him?), and it drove him crazy that Mello couldn't even see how he felt.

Then Mello had to scream more about Near, about the boy wanting to take Matt away from him, and this time Matt had really wanted to laugh, because Near wouldn't notice him even if he toppled over all of Near's painstakingly prepared card houses. Matt wasn't the type who got noticed, and even if he were, Near wasn't the type who paid attention to anything but impulsive blondes with a fascination for chocolate.

Near probably only knew Matt because he knew Mello (in fact, that was how the kids at Wammy knew him: Mello's friend, Mello's roommate, Mello's backup, Mello's sidekick, Mello, Mello, Mello). Mello defined Matt, in a way. When Mello ran away Matt realized how his life had revolved around the volatile blonde. Life wasn't worth living without Mello to hang out with. There weren't any tantrums to deal with, no broken fingers or sprained ankles to bandage, no crunching sounds in the middle of night and no chocolate stains to get out of the sheets in the morning. There wasn't anything anymore. Everything had felt empty, everything had felt silent, and Matt cursed Mello for fucking up his world, because he lived for a good six or seven years without Mello in his life, so why couldn't he live it now that the blonde had walked out on him?

He had noticed Near's eyes turning to look over him quietly, every now and then, (ever since Mello left, anyway) and he had wanted to say, "Assessing the new enemy? No thanks. You and Mello can fight over L's legacy if you want." But he knew that wasn't why he had attracted Near's attention – read it in those cold, probing eyes, because even if Near pretended he didn't care two shits about Mello, he was just as obsessed with the blonde as the blonde had been with him.

'You're like two lovers who just can't get back together," he had once said to Mello and got a black eye as his reward, but he knew he was right. Mello could curse and seethe and hate Near for being better, but he needed Near in his life, just like Matt had needed Mello in his. It wasn't fair that Mello could just pack up his bags and leave so easily, while Matt was wasting away in the Wammy House without the stupid blonde by his side.

And that was when he decided to screw it all up and run away himself.

Five years. Five fucking years of indecision and self-loathing, spending all his time indoors, either trying to forget Mello (his video games numbed the pain every now and then, but nothing really healed the wounds, not even the cigarette smoke that had become a permanent fixture in his apartment) or trying to find him (all those hours, flipping through the channels in TV, desperate for a glance of a scowling blonde with a chocolate bar between his teeth). He knew it was stupid – Mello wasn't careless enough to run around in the open, not with a crazy mass murderer who only needed a face to kill.

Kira. Matt wanted to laugh hysterically whenever he heard the name, whenever he saw the headlines. It was all this fucker's fault why his life was so fucked up—it was his fault why L died, it was his fault why Mello ran away, it was his fault that Matt was living this stupid half-life, clinging to some hope that maybe Mello would one day have the decency to call him up and apologize for leaving him without further notice.

Kira, all Kira's fault. Oh, people blamed him for a lot of things, big bad Kira, blamed him for shit like injustice and manslaughter and other big words spouted by fancy spokespersons, but Kira had never affected any of them personally like he had with all the Wammy kids. His name was imprinted in their memories for a long time—murderer, killer, villain, the one who took down their wonderful, unbeatable hero. He had crushed many people's dreams—Matt had been one of them—and left them unable to move on with L's ghost restless with his defeat.

The entire world could run around in panic and fear, torn between worshipping their new god or hating him, but Matt didn't feel the least afraid, because Kira wouldn't notice a nobody like him (nobody had, actually, except Mello, and that's why it hurt to run around with all the blondes in the city, because none of them saw him like Mello did). Matt had always been the best in espionage because he blended with the background so well you could barely tell the difference.

Mello, on the other hand, had probably never let the idea of being out of the limelight cross his mind. He craved attention like he craved chocolate bars; he gave the saying bad publicity was good publicity a whole new meaning. As long as it meant having people (particularly Near, more particularly L) acknowledging him, he'd even blow himself up.

Matt wasn't surprised when Mello came crawling into his doorstep with third-degree burns that no one had ever survived before without proper medical attention. He even anticipated it, deep in the recesses of his mind – the minute the TV showed the news of an explosion of a mafia hideout and the deaths of dozens of its' members, Matt could smell Mello's involvement in it like he used to back then, when Mello would pull pranks on the other kids and no one could pin it down on him because they didn't have enough evidence. They all knew it was Mello, but they could never prove it, no matter how they tried. Mello would smile all day, proud at having eluded yet another punishment, until Matt would point out to him the single thing that spelled out the mistake that only Mello would make. (And, Matt would add offhandedly, Near probably noticed it, too.)

Then Mello would scowl, and think up of an even more elaborate plot, an even more dangerous one, because Mello believed that the flashier it was, the better.

No one did crazy like Mello – that was the one indication that proved Mello's involvement, showed Mello's fingerprints all over the idea.

Mello always came up with the most outrageous plans, expecting them to work exactly as he designed, arrogantly believing that everything he came up with was perfect. But Matt knew better – he had been there during Mello's first mistakes; he had seen first-hand Mello's inability to deal with anything but perfection and his backup plans usually involved a bigger problem rather than an alternate solution. Apparently, Mello hadn't learned at all during the five years they had spent apart, because his idea of a trump card was exploding the fucking building while he was still in it.

And, as usual, Mello would turn to Matt as his last resort, just when he's fucked everything up and there's no other alternative left.

As for himself, Matt cursed his own inability to turn Mello down – five years of pretending he had moved on, only to see his resolve crumble faced with the sight of half-dead Mello. "Let me in," the blonde had choked out before passing out, and Matt hadn't even thought of refusing. It was just like the old times; Mello used to get cravings for chocolate in the middle of the night, and Matt would be up and out of his bed before Mello could begin whining. Mello had Matt wrapped around his finger so tightly; if Mello said that they had to go kidnap some dumb bitch that, in all probability, would get both of them killed, just so he could prove to Near that he was so much better and smarter, Matt's only worry would be how soon they could pull of a stunt like that with Mello's injuries. He never questioned Mello's plans, no matter how ridiculous they were. He'd even follow Mello to hell if the stupid bastard asked him to – that was just how much he cared for the blonde; not that he ever noticed.

He was just the afterthought, after all. Matt's stomach churned as he carried Mello's unconscious body up to his room – Mello could clearly spend five years without thinking about Matt, only remembering him when he had no one else to turn to.

Near, on the other hand, was a constant thought in Mello's mind; he breathed with white ghosts dancing in his blurry vision, turned in his sleep with Near's name on his lips. Matt pretended not to hear as he applied antiseptic on the wounds – it was easier, he thought dully, because while he was happy to settle as a friend if he couldn't be anything more, that didn't mean he had to stay and feed Mello's unhealthy obsession with the white-haired boy.

Sometimes, Matt wondered how it would be if he had ever tried to compete with Mello. Would the blonde acknowledge him? Probably not. He was a faraway third compared to the real competitors, just another stepping-stone to becoming the new L, someone that didn't even need to be considered in the whole rat race between Mello and Near. He was still that nobody he had been ten years ago.

It didn't matter, though. None of it did—not while Mello's breathing could still reach his ear, and he could wake up the next day knowing it wasn't just a dream. Mello was still the bitchy asshole he remembered, part-drama queen and part-escaped mental patient, and Matt was savoring every second he could spend with the blonde (who knew when Kira would show up and kill them on the spot?) while he still could.

So it was Matt treating all of Mello's burns, listening to him bitch about the Japanese police and Near, sleeping on the sofa while Mello turned restlessly on his own bed, going out of his way to buy Hershey's chocolate bars and stalking pretty fourteen (or is twenty?)-year-old girls. All for Mello. It was sick and stupid of him to run around obeying the blonde's every whim, but it was practically programmed in him. Five years of following Mello blindly had drilled it in him. Add the five years he had spent wasting his life away worrying about the blonde and hoping for at least an email until said blonde showed up in his apartment looking like shit and fainting the minute he took another step, and that pretty much sucked him in. Oh sure, Mello was going to get in more crazy shit (when had he not gotten into one?), but at least Matt would be there to pull him out of it. That was his role, basically. Mello turned to him when the shit really hit the fan—when push came to shove, Matt was the only one he could really count on.

And that was what made them friends.


End file.
